


who made the constellations?

by brightmatter (keepemguessing)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen, M/M, Mutual Pining, a lot of thinking about life, a lot of thinking about memories and the past, a slightly different more in depth take on the force, existentialism and love, this is a sad one boys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:21:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26906542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keepemguessing/pseuds/brightmatter
Summary: FN-2187 may have had a name somewhere out in the galaxy, he may have had parents and siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles, he may have had the things those ideas promise. He may have been loved once.But only the universe knew that now, and the universe talks directly to no one.
Relationships: Finn & Rey (Star Wars), Poe Dameron & Finn, Poe Dameron & Finn & Rey, Poe Dameron/Finn
Kudos: 9





	who made the constellations?

**Author's Note:**

> hi! this is a sad one and deals largely with an unhappy childhood marred by abuse, and finn growing up to process it after he defects from the first order. it's very existential and sad and gay. hope u enjoy, next update will be someday

THE ORIGIN OF FN-2187

***

FN-2187 did not have an unhappy childhood. 

He had no childhood at all. 

It can be reasoned that he had an infancy. It cannot be determined whether this took place in the First Order or before it. 

Had he a family? Had they loved him? Had they mourned him, or were they to be mourned? 

FN-2187 had never asked, never thought about it at all. He did not know to question it, how could he have? All of existence, as far as he knew, was contained in the belly of Star Destroyers. 

So FN-2187 had not had a childhood. The promise of one may have been assumed once, along with a given name, but that missed opportunity mattered not. 

It mattered not if there was a mother with the same glowing smile. FN-2187 had no idea what his own looked like. 

It mattered not if there was a father with the same strong laugh. FN-2187 had never learned what he found funny. 

The sister who wore her hair in complicated beautiful braids and liked to read real paper books did not matter. 

The brother who played instruments and wrote songs, who painted portraits and told stories, did not matter. 

Even if they were not dead, they were unreachable. They were lost to him either way. If he had known to think of them at all, it still would not have done to dwell on what might have once been. 

FN-2187 may have had a name somewhere out in the galaxy, he may have had parents and siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles, he may have had the things those ideas promise. He may have been loved once. 

But only the universe knew that now, and the universe talks directly to no one. 

***

The day FN-2187’s unit is submitted for the first of what will become many endurance conditioning trials is his sixth birthday. 

No one but the stars know this, of course, including little FN-2187 himself, and there might as well be no one in the cosmos who cares anyway. 

To FN-2187, this day is not his sixth birthday. It is the first day of harsh pain being unavoidable. 

FN-2187's unit has been selected to undergo the high-temperature trial first. No one has told them this. Officers don’t tell cadets anything, except where to go and what to do. Never what is coming next, never anything they could think too far into. 

And cadets do not ask, and if they do, they are punished. If they ask too many times, they are sedated in their sleep, incapacitated before they have a chance to come to and struggle, carried on stretchers from their bunks, and blown out the airlock. (Threats are talked about. Everyone knows what happens if you disobey. Everyone knows what has happened when there is a gaping hole in standing formation lineups. Asking a question is one of many offenses that can get you spaced.)

Information is dangerous. And the First Order is not interested in investing in soldiers who will use it. 

So the FNs have not been informed of the endurance training. They have not been told of the high-temperature trials, and how terrible they will be. They have definitely not been told of the low-temperature trials that will be following, no one has mentioned how they will be so, so much worse. 

Instead, the two hundred cadets in the FN unit have been led to a large white and black room and lined up in eight rows of twenty-five facing a set of eight identical doors. 

FN-2187 is in the second row from the left, there are five cadets in front of him. FN-2165 is bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet. FN-2187 wishes he would stop. He is drawing attention to them, and being singled out is never good. 65 has always had trouble standing still, however. FN-2187 is used to the discomfort his presence brings. He knows that some insightful cadets and every single officer are wondering how much longer 65 will be around. 

The officers stand at the front of the room, pacing between the doors. At some signal, they usher the first stormtrooper from each row up to the corresponding door. With a hiss, the black metal slides open to reveal a blank, white, square room beyond. The stormtroopers walk inside. The doors snick shut in unison. 

They wait. FN-2187 does not know how long it takes. 

He would of course never say so, (if he did say so he would likely be sent in for discipline, something FN-2187 has never been subjected to,) but he thinks that keeping them all lined up for hours, interrupting the usual training regime with empty waiting, is not very time-efficient. 

Generally, though, they are never separated from their squads under any circumstances. They have never been out of sight of the officers ever, which just makes the stormtroopers going to the other rooms one by one that much stranger and more foreboding.

The doors open again, sometime later. There is not a trace of the last cadet. 

FN-2187 is only the fifth in line, yet by the time it is his turn to walk through the heavy hydraulic doors, he has been standing for what must be hours. 

He steps up, with his back straight and head held high in perfect posture. He has no idea what is going to happen next, but since he arrived in the First Order, (whether this was before or after he was given the opportunity to be loved is unimportant,) he has been conditioned and trained to fear nothing, or to at least fear silently. 

FN-2187 walks from the long, high room, into the small, square room. The door shuts louder from this side. 

There are cameras, in the upper four corners of this otherwise blank cube, but if the surveillance doesn't count, for the first time in his entire life, FN-2187 is alone. 

There is a black "X" in the middle of the floor. Ingrained in his mind somewhere is an instinct that takes the symbol as a command. He stands on the mark. 

The air has a hum in it. An echo, a memory of energy that is currently vacant from the space. 

Nothing happens immediately. At least, nothing noticeable. For some amount of time, there is more waiting. FN-2187 is exactly, perfectly still. 

Then, it is warm. Very, very warm. This does not last long, it quickly moves from warm to harsh, unpleasant, and biting, burning and boiling. The subtle hum from before is heightened into a violent screech, as superheated air from unseen vents floods the box. 

Breathing suddenly becomes just this side of impossible. It is the most painful thing FN-2187 can imagine. He feels the heat on his skin, intuitively knows it must be causing him pain, but it is nothing compared with the feeling of that same pressure inside his lungs. 

Even with the agony, he does not scream. He has not been addressed first. He has not been told to move from the “X,” so on the “X" he stays. 

FN-2187 is a perfect model stormtrooper. He knows this, so do the others in his unit, so do the officers. He has never done anything less than ‘exemplary’ in any of the training exercises, he has never disobeyed. He has had no intention of that ever changing. 

Most other cadets have been punished before, at least once or twice. FN-2187 is something of an exception. He has never undergone the chemical trials designed to discourage bad behavior, which causes excruciating pain without physical side effects. He has never been burned or beaten, he has never been denied ration packs for days at a time. He has never been barred from sleep or water.

Those deterrents and punishments were never necessary with him. Seeing it happen to his comrades has always been enough to keep him in line. 

So FN-2187 has never done anything wrong; he has never been punished. He knows this. He does not know pain the same way other cadets might, so this is foreign to him. He does not understand what he did wrong.

He thinks back, trying to grasp what he has done to deserve this. That is something they make clear, you are punished if you deserve it. Molten lungs feel like a punishment. 

FN-2187 has never cried, that he can remember, although he has seen it. He is not entirely sure he knows what properly crying would feel like. Still, he does not think that the wetness that pools in his eyes from the pain boiling away is typical. The moisture remains trapped under his helmet, making the air he tries to breathe just that much thicker and more jagged. 

FN-2187 can only assume this is a punishment for something. It is the only explanation that makes any sense. Stormtroopers who do things wrong are punished, deserve to be punished. 

But he knows as little about his crime as he does about his birthday. He cannot fathom what he has done to deserve this.

What has he done to deserve this? 

FN-2187 will in time realize that the cruelty of any subjugation within the First Order is not deserved. 

But he is six years old. All he knows, what he has newly realized, is that pain is guaranteed now, whether he has done something to warrant it or not. 

There is no more direct safety from pain to be kept by being good. The only thing he knew has been turned on its head. 

He does not know what to think, and for years and years to follow, not thinking will be the path of least resistance. 

Blindly following will be the only way to survive training exercises, which will get more and more callous by the day. 

Ignoring the pain, both that he experiences and witnesses, will become his standard procedure. 

But those are struggles for later days. He will adopt those tactics later. 

Right now, he is six years old and he is lightheaded from how hard the air is to breathe, he is dizzy from the heat, he is sweating under his uniform and it hurts so badly that he thinks it could be blood seeping from his pores. 

FN-2187 falls unconscious, and he thinks that he must have failed the test of this penance although he does not know his sin. FN-2187 wonders what new horror he will be faced with when, if he wakes up. 

It does not occur to him that this trial went exactly as it was designed. It provided a specific kind of pain that he will be routinely exposed to until he stops feeling it. 

Even in a place such as this, even in the clutches of this brutality that he has almost always known, something intrinsic in FN-2187, maybe something a mother with a brilliant smile or a father with a melodious laugh passed on, wants to believe that things are better than they seem. 

Part of him wants to believe that people get what they deserve. As his body is dragged from the square room, his eyes no longer seeing and his ears no longer hearing, his skin still on fire and his lungs still burning, he hopes to something unseen, maybe the universe, that he somehow deserved this. 

He doesn’t know what he will do if he did not deserve this.

**Author's Note:**

> thank u for reading!! pls kudos and comment if u enjoyed!!


End file.
